An increase in the number of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and wearable computing devices, over the past few years has led to the emergence and development of many mobile location-based services. A few of the most common mobile location-based services include mapping, navigation, and searching for nearby restaurants or stores. Other examples include geo-tagging pictures, sharing current locations with friends, “checking-in” to places on social networks, and receiving location-based deals and promotions.
Given the growing number of mobile devices and the popularity of mobile location-based services, it is therefore not surprising that some mobile devices include multiple different types of positioning systems for determining a geographic location of the mobile device. For example, many mobile devices have an integrated global positioning system (GPS) that is configured to determine the position of a mobile device by precisely timing signals sent by GPS satellites above the Earth. In addition, some mobile devices are also configured to determine the position of the mobile device by measuring power levels and antenna patterns of cellular radio signals broadcast by cellular base stations. Some mobile devices also make use of the presence of one or more particular wireless access points to estimate the position of the mobile device based on triangulation and/or fingerprinting. Each of the different positioning systems has advantages and disadvantages.